The+Search+for+Jackie's+Body

The fruitless search for the body of abortion victim Jacqueline Smith was exhaustive and complicated.

Because Thomas Daniel's first statement was that he'd dumped Jackie's body in the Hudson River, a search was carried out there even though the police gave more credence to the story that Jackie's body was cut into around 50 pieces, wrapped in Christmas paper, and dumped into trash cans in side streets around Broadway between 60th or 72nd and 80th or 90th Streets, an area mostly north of Leobaldo Pejean's apartment and west of Central Park, where he and Daniel had finished cutting up Jackie's. They had begun dismembering it in the bathtub at Daniel's apartment, where Jackie had died. Daniel then borrowed a friend's car to move it to Pejean's place.

They dumped the packets over a period of several days, beginning on Christmas Eve and finishing on December 30.

Police conducted a door-to-door canvassing of the neighborhood, asking people if they had seen any of the packets. Police from four precincts helped in the search.

Police questioned building superintendents, maintenance men, and trash disposal workers throughout the search area with help from the Department of Sanitation.

The search was complicated by the fact that there was no single company collecting trash. Several different refuse hauling companies working as independent contractors collected garbage in the area and brought it to different disposal sites. Those sites included several city incinerators, several landfills, and the Atlantic Ocean. Documentation of what trash was dumped where was incomplete, making the task even more difficult.

Police also looked for clues amid the ashes in the incinerator at Thomas Daniel's apartment building and in the trunk of the friend's car that Daniel had borrowed to transport Jackie's partially-dismembered body from his apartment to Pejean's.

No trace of Jackie's remains was ever found.





